The Gift of Listening

Listening at the level described here is a discipline and an art that will pay big dividends in your personal relationships and in your business endeavors.

Giving the gift of listening starts with you setting aside, for the moment, your agenda to be sourced in a conversation.

The second thing you must do to listen at this level, is to start listening with your body, your heart and your intuition — instead of your mind.

The third step to the Gift of Listening is to take a look at what is referred to as your habitual listening or your “already, always listening.”

• I already know this; therefore, I do not really need to listen.
• Get to the point. I do not have time for all the preamble.
• I know where you are going with this and will help you get to the end.
• Whatever you have, I have better. Hurry up and finish so I can show you mine.
• I disagree with your position; therefore I will not listen further.
• I am preoccupied with my own life story; I cannot pay attention to yours.
• I am so overwhelmed with who you are, I cannot hear what you are saying.

• I am here to hear all you have to say.
• I am here to feel all you are feeling.
• I am here to hear what you are not saying, as well.
• I am here to source you, to empower you, to get what it is you want me to get about you.
• It is all about you today.
• Your story is the only story.
• Your opinions carry opportunities for me to learn.
• Your concerns are valid for you and today are my concerns, as well.
• Today I see things through your eyes, hear through your ears and feel with your heart.
• In this conversation, you speak and I listen... really listen.

The single most impactful word that describes what is accomplished here is “honoring” another person.

Be the Most Interesting Person They Have Ever Met Decades ago the editors of Psychology Today magazine staged an experiment to establish the effects of listening and asking easy, probing questions. Staff members flew to LAX from New York. The editor flew in later, with the intention of meeting his seatmate and getting to know him on the five-hour flight. For the duration of the flight, the Psychology Today editor asked questions and listened. He asked more questions based on what he felt his seatmate wanted to talk more about, and avoided areas he felt he didn’t. His total “purpose for being” during the five hours, was to have the conversation be all about his seatmate. As suspected, throughout the flight the seatmate never asked anything about the editor, not even his name. As the seatmate disembarked the plane, the staff for Psychology Today was there to interview him. They simply asked him what he thought about the man seated next to him on the flight (the Psychology Today editor, whose name he did not even know). He responded: “He was the most interesting man I have ever met.”

The gift of listening is the gift of healing.

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